Six Parts of Preaching Preparation AI Cannot Replace
By Dave Cook
The first article in this series looked at a foundational belief about Christian preaching that guides our use of technology when we prepare our sermons. If Spirit-filled men are the only creatures in the universe that God has called to preach, AI cannot replace a human preacher who composed the words he is preaching.
Personally, I don’t think sermons written by a chatbot are going to become a widespread problem in the church. Some pastors are already plagiarizing the sermons of other preachers as their own. Many of those pastors will probably start using AI to do the same thing. But the majority of us love preparing sermons too much to let a machine attempt it for us.
The more realistic threat is that pastors might start using AI to do small parts of our routine that we should be doing ourselves. And so this article asks what parts of our preparation we should guard. If the work of the qualified man and the work of the Spirit cannot be replaced in preaching, what parts of the preaching process can only be done by the tandem work of the Spirit and the preacher?
So here are six aspects of preaching that could never be replaced by a commentary, a screen, AI, or whatever trend comes next.
Unhurried Time in the Text
The Spirit of God speaks through the Scriptures. A commentary can help a man understand the Bible. AI can help translate it, summarize it, or read it aloud in the voice of C-3PO. But only time meditating on the text itself soaks a man in the life-giving words of the Spirit (Ps 1:2).
Here, in the quiet with an open Bible, is where the Spirit and the preacher begin to dance their sweet dance. Technology could never replace the beautiful moments spent reading a text, memorizing it, analyzing the structure, comparing it to the passages near it, and considering its meaning. Parts of sermon prep are faster today because of technology, but this part will always have to take its time. Preacher, spend time listening for the Spirit’s voice in the text itself.
A Heart Changed by the Word
This Spirit-filled man must preach from a heart that has been conquered and enlivened by the very message he is preaching. And so another task AI cannot do is apply the word to your own soul before you preach it to others. In Athens, Paul’s very spirit was provoked before he preached (Acts 17:16). Ezra “set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel” (Neh 7:10, emphasis mine).
Take the time to ask: what is the Lord calling me to believe, to feel, to do differently? Is he pointing out sin I must turn from? Is he comforting my soul? Don’t prescribe medicine you haven’t taken. Take time to let the Spirit change your heart through the text. And don’t hand over to technology the parts of your routine through which the text would speak to your heart.
Prayer
Will I sound silly if I say that ChatGPT can’t pray for you? Maybe it’s better to say that no technology will bypass your need for reverent prayer in sermon preparation. You need the Spirit’s help. So ask for it every step of the way.
Words Spoken from the Man’s Heart
After the Spirit has changed the man’s heart through the Word, the preaching must come out of that changed heart. Jesus says the mouth speaks out of overflow of the heart (Matt 12:34, 15:18). This connection is what we miss when we let AI compose our emails and text messages. It’s doubly missing when we let AI compose our sermons. How can we preach what the Spirit did not knit in our hearts and birth with our cries?
This boundary helps us find the line between using AI helpfully and letting it do our work for us. If a preacher says, “I need a better synonym for ‘many-sided,” either a thesaurus or a chatbot can help him find “manifold.” His heart will say, “That’s it!” and the use of the word in the sermon will come from his heart. If the chatbot starts editing his work, the line gets murkier. But he’s probably safe if it was making simple edits he already wanted it to make in his heart. When the machine composes the words for him, they aren’t coming from his heart and we know we’ve crossed the line.
The Man’s Integrity
Perhaps most urgently, Spirit-filled men don’t deceive their congregations. If you want to grieve the Spirit you rely on, pass off the work of another preacher or a chatbot as your own. Your people may not know the difference. But the Holy Dove will at least be aggravated with you, if he hasn’t left the operation entirely. Nothing can replace forthright, straightforward honesty in your preaching.
A Shepherd who Knows His People
Technology companies probably know a frightening amount about our people. But a web tracker can’t sit across a table and eat pulled pork with them. Technology can’t replace the time you visited them in the hospital, sat with them at the church supper, corrected them, went kayaking with them, or prayed for their sick child. Perhaps we’ll one day be able to find data about what sorts of illustrations will connect best with our people. But we’ll never be able to replace the relationships we have with them (1 Jn 1:1–3).
If anything, the fast change of technology has helped me get back to the fundamentals of preaching, and I hope it does the same for you. There are certain tasks AI can help us with, which we’ll consider in the final article of this series, but the fundamentals will stay the same until the Lord returns. Preacher, guard the parts of your workflow that God has assigned only to you and pray fervently for the Spirit’s work, a far better Helper than any technology that has aided us.
Now that we’ve walked through what not to do, the third (and final) article in this series will point out a few modest but helpful ways AI can improve your preaching workflow.
Editors Note: This article is Part 2 of a series entitled, AI in Preaching. You can find article 1, Why ChatGPT Can’t Preach here.